Looking Back…

Two atoms are walking down the street. The first turns to the other and says “Dude, I think I just lost an electron.” The second atom says “Are you sure?” The first says “Dude, I’m positive!” (I’m a dork, I know, just a little science humor for you). On August 2 of 1932, Carl D. Anderson (another science dork) discovered the positron, commonly referred to as the antiparticle of the electron. A positron has an electrical charge of +1 and when it collides with an electron the two particles are annhilated, producing gamma rays photons. The positron was the first evidence of antimatter. Today, positrons are used to map the activity in the brain during PET scans.

On August 5th, 1914, the American Traffic Light Company installed the first electric traffic light in Cleveland, Ohio. Traffic lights had been used before, but this was the first installation of an electric model (previous models used gas lamps with a manual switch to change the color). The original lights only had a red and green color, a warning buzzer was used to warn drivers of an impending color change. A yellow light was not added until 1920, but is still ignored, even today.

On August 6, 1890, in New York, murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electric chair. It has been used by more than twenty five states, and shockingly enough, is still used in four of them (Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia)

Also on August 6, in 1926, the Warner Brothers premiered their new Vitaphone system with the movie Don Juan, starring John Barrymore. This was a silent movie which had an accompanied sound track that would be played in a theater and started when the movie began. The video below contains stills from the original movie, unfortunately there is no sound.If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get Flash Player from Adobe.

On August 7th, 1947, Thor Heyerdahl’s balsa wood raft, which had set sail from South America 101 days earlier, landed in the Tuamotu islands in the French Polynesia (halfway between Austrailia and South America.) Thor’s 4375 mile journey by raft proves that prehistoric people could have traveled by primitive boats across large expanses of water. This helps fuel the debate of how and when early human migration took place.

About Steven

Steven never dreamed his first job out of college would be in public relations, and on top of that working for one of the top museums in the country. After all, he majored in History at Vassar College. Within three months of graduation, he landed a spot in the PR department and has not looked back since. He is fast becoming a communications fanatic, spending a tremendous amount of his time promoting the museum and all it has to offer.